Many workers can perform their day-to-day occupational duties and comply with labor codes for fall “prevention” while wearing what is known in the fire service as a Class 2 safety seat-style harness, which has only a waist belt and leg loops.
However, occasionally the situations faced by such workers change, including facing more dangerous situations requiring a Class 3 safety full body harness, which is a full body harness with not only leg loops but full torso straps as well. For example, a worker may wear a Class 2 seat-style harness expecting to work in certain conditions but, while working, conditions may change whereby the worker needs to perform certain types of rescue operations and/or work in a different than expected area where confined space or fall “protection” is required.
Transitioning from a Class 2 seat-style harness to a Class 3 full body harness must often be done as quickly as possible, since the changed situation often means that a person could be facing additional life safety threats, in need of performing a rescue and/or in need of being rescued. Unfortunately, removing a seat-style harness and then putting on a full body harness, or even putting on a full body harness over the top of a seat-style harness, can be complex and time consuming, wasting precious rescue/work time when quite often every minute and second counts. Further, the chance of improperly donning the full body harness increases when, as is often the case, it must be done as quickly as possible in chaotic situations. If that occurs, both the person being rescued and the rescuer himself may find their life at serious risk from an incorrectly donned harness.